State budget work coming to a close

Thursday

May 28, 2009 at 2:00 AM

Beginning on the Tuesday following Memorial Day, both houses of the Legislature will be in double sessions for each full week until June 12, which, if all goes as planned, will be the final day of this year's schedule. Some of the most important decisions and laws will occur in these last three weeks, including (hopefully) major investments in Maine's infrastructure and economic future through a progressive and creative bond package. Suffice it to say that your representatives and senators will be at work on overload until mid-June.

Beginning on the Tuesday following Memorial Day, both houses of the Legislature will be in double sessions for each full week until June 12, which, if all goes as planned, will be the final day of this year's schedule. Some of the most important decisions and laws will occur in these last three weeks, including (hopefully) major investments in Maine's infrastructure and economic future through a progressive and creative bond package. Suffice it to say that your representatives and senators will be at work on overload until mid-June.

2009-2010 biennial budget

Soon, the Maine Legislature will pass our state's operating budget for the next two years. The Joint Standing Committee on Appropriations changed Gov. John Baldacci's recommended budget in major ways and emerged with a bipartisan, unanimously proposed budget which will be voted on by the full Legislature the week beginning with Memorial Day. This is a history-making budget, because it will be the largest cut ever from one biennial to the next. Overall, almost a billion dollars will be removed from the original budget. Everyone in Maine will feel some pain. There are those who will applaud many of these cuts, but there are enough removals of funding for each one of us to dislike at least some of them.

Most of the changes which were made by the Appropriations Committee were accomplished by the committee's admirable and tireless commitment to consultations with groups represented by their spokespersons. The negotiations often lasted into the wee hours of morning. Groups such as state employees, public school teachers, business leaders, the Maine Municipal Association, etc., had their chance to affect the final outcome. These groups did achieve important goals for their constituencies. Once passed by the Legislature, there is every indication that the governor will sign this budget into law. Among immediate needs for this budget to be passed are the subsidies for Maine Care health programs for low-income Mainers. This funding is being placed on hold until the budget process is finalized. The Maine Care checks will be delivered, with no reduced funding amounts, when the ink dries from the governor's pen.

The gay marriage rights debate

The recent passage of Maine's gay-rights marriage legislation, which was quickly signed into law by Gov. Baldacci, propelled a political spectacle on a level rarely experienced in Augusta. The day-long debate in the House of Representatives was intense and at times poignant. Legislators on both sides of the issue articulated their own struggles with being gay personally or with the frustrations they felt on behalf of their loved ones who are gay. Two representatives who supported the bill spoke at length of their difficulties as gay people of creating and raising a family under current law. One member, a mother whose daughter is gay and whom she loves very much, told us how hard it was emotionally for her to vote against this bill. Another legislator, whose wife is black, spoke with his voice breaking about how in recent times in his home southern state, as well as in many other states, he could not have married the person he deeply loved because of the anti-miscegenation laws which lasted into the 1960s. The debate made it clear that these issues revolve around normal human beings, with genuine dilemmas and with real personal stories. That is why I believe this legislation passed with the support of legislators on both sides of the aisle and with a larger majority than most anticipated.

Because the governor so quickly signed this legislation into law, opponents of gay marriage rights now have more time to gather by August the legitimate 55,087 signatures required to place this legislation on this November's ballot so that Maine voters can decide the fate of this law. A related problem is how active a role the Catholic Church and evangelical churches can play in gathering these petitions because of the Internal Revenue Service's regulations governing nonprofits' political efforts. Certainly, many nonprofit religious groups historically have advocated strongly for political causes, including the black churches in the south during the many decades needed to gain civil rights legislation at all levels of government. How this dispute is resolved will be important and interesting, but I suspect the anti-gay marriage denominations will not be overly hamstrung in acting upon their desire to overturn this law. It should be made clear that this law does not in any way compel a church to perform or approve gay marriages. Otherwise, such a legal mandate would violate the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state.

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